The Japanese contributed 49% of the divorces in Hawaii, though they comprise only 34% of the population; the Americans, 7%, though they were 8% of the population. The rest were distributed among the other nationalities. This is how those statistics compared with divorce statistics in other countries. There were in England out of every hundred thousand inhabitants, two divorces per year; in Austria, one; in Norway, six; in Sweden, eight; in Italy, three; in Denmark, seventeen; in Germany, twenty-three; and in France, the same; in the United States, seventy-three; and in the island of Oahu (Honolulu), four hundred.
Hundreds of little folk, a host of children, have passed out of that room either fatherless or motherless. Back in the lands which they might have called home it would not have happened in just this way, or having happened so, it would not have had the same tragic meaning. For in Oriental countries fathers frequently put the mothers of their children aside. Yet, somehow the tragedies do not fret and strut in such distorted ways in lands where distortion is much more common, as in the East. In most Oriental countries it is enough for a man to say his wife talks too much and declare her divorced, but when he comes to the half-way house, Hawaii, he must be cruel, extremely cruel to his wife before the law will grant him a divorce. So he is "cruel" in a way he may be sure will secure his freedom.
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What the results of all these mixtures will be, no one can as yet tell, but the consensus of opinion gives the Chinese-Hawaiian the prize for superiority. However promiscuous other races may be, the Japanese seldom stoops to conquer in that way. The maiden of Japan shares with the white woman an aversion for these strangers in Hawaii, though the number of Japanese women who marry white men is far greater than that of white women marrying into any of the races in the Pacific.
One of the most prolific causes of divorce in Hawaii has been the so-called "picture bride." Because of the exclusion of Asiatic laborers, few Japanese and Chinese women have been born in the island. But because of their preference for their own women, Japanese sent home for wives. To get round the exclusion laws, they stretched the home process a bit, selected by photograph the girls they wished, had themselves married by proxy (a method recognized in Japan as legal), and then simply sent for their "wives." Aside from the subsequent divorces which very frequently ensued, there have been cases not without their humorous sides.
One story was told that must be accepted with caution.
Mr. Goto, who just a short while ago was Goto San, wants a wife. He sees a go-between who secures for him the pictures of some girls of his own district. He makes his selection and the process of marriage is accomplished. With something little short of glee, he waits the maid's arrival.
She comes. But alas, not alone! Mr. Goto waits with others at the pier. Everybody is blessed but him. Chagrin and impatience battle in his heart. Nearly everybody has been supplied with a wife. There are only two women left. Neither seems to be the one he married. Goto thinks,—thinks rapidly. Who will ever know the difference? He claims the prettier; she accepts him, and off they dash on their honeymoon, à la Occident, a two-day trip round the island of Oahu in a motor-car. And never were nuptials more satisfactory.
In the meantime Fujimoto San comes rushing up pell-mell. His garage business has kept him. He finds a lone girl, but she does not tally with the reproduction he married. "Not so nice," is the first thought that flashes across his brain. "Little too broad in the nose, lips thicker than those on the photograph. Can I mistake?" But she is the only one left. He bows at least a half-dozen times, bows clean over, half-way to the ground, but alas! every time his head bobs up he sees the same disheartening face, a face he never ordered, a face he cannot accept. He must clear up the mystery. He calls the agent. Investigations reveal that Goto was there ahead of him; so Fujimoto sets out on a chase after the honeymoon pair. It ends in Honolulu two days later, and another divorce case comes up in court.
The "picture bride" is now a thing of the past, as the Japanese Government has agreed to deny her a passport in accordance with the spirit of our treaty with Japan. From the point of view of immigration, this may be a solution; but there is a phase of the problem of the mixture of races in Hawaii I have never yet seen discussed,—that is, the woman. In the case of the Japanese woman, much more than in that of the man, entrance to Hawaii or America is freedom such as has never been known before. At home she has been taught obedience and deference to her husband. There are many others ready to accept that burden if she is unwilling. But in Hawaii, where there are so many Japanese seeking wives and where she moves among peoples whose standards are an inversion of everything she has been taught to regard as virtuous and feminine, she finds herself in an altogether different position. On the streets she sees many white women treated with courtesy; in the courts women receive even more sympathy than men,—to her an unheard-of thing. And so we find that when all the divorces in the Hawaiian Islands have been tabulated, these little timid creatures of Japan have been emboldened to the extent of deserting their husbands in veritable shoals, making up 90% of the entire number of Japanese divorces. It is a scramble for readjustment of conjugal relations based on something nearer emotional equality.